FAQ: Do You Base Characters Off of You or People You Know?

Are any of your characters based on you or people you know?

This is one of the questions that I get most commonly at book signings or convention events.  I suspect its because fans meet me and anticipate spotting some aspect of their favorite character in me. They're most likely very disappointed because none of my characters are based on me.

A few years ago a fan asked me, "So which character is you? Jenni or Katie? Or is it Nerit?"

"None of them," I answered. "They're just their own person and not like me."

The fan turned to my husband, who was standing behind me, and asked him, "So for real. Which character is her?"

"None of them," my husband answered.

"C'mon," the fan persisted. "One of them has to be her."

"Nope," my husband answered in his stoic way.

"So then who are her characters based on? You?"

My husband, who likes to keep to the background at these events, shook his head. "No. The characters are creations of her mind. None of the characters are like any of our friends or family."

The fan stared at us incredulously.

As a matter of fact, I would never base a character on me because I'm pretty boring and would not make an interesting character in a book. I spend most of my time writing, playing video games, marathoning TV shows with my hubby, shopping, and reading.  That does not make for an interesting character.   I have no desire to self-insert myself into any of my works. The mere thought is very disconcerting.

But how do you get your characters then...

I often feel like my characters are like Athena. They burst fully formed out of my head and land on the page of my book demanding their place in the plot.   The characters are their own people with their own likes and dislikes and even hold different belief systems from me and sometimes aren't even human.  Not one character has yet to embody my political, religious, or personal viewpoint on the world.  I might share a traits with some of the characters, like PRETTY WHEN SHE DIES' Samantha and her love of Betsey Johnson, but they're definitely not me.

Inspiration for characters come from weird places. A picture might inspire the sudden birth of one, or a voice I overhear in a store might create a brand new character. I also dream from the viewpoint of the characters sometimes and that's how I uncover them. I dreamed of Amaliya and Glynis before I ever knew their names.

So do you base characters off of friends, family, people you know...

A few years ago the answer to this question would have been a firm no, but now three characters have been deliberately crafted off of people I know. Rune from AS THE WORLD DIES is based off my friend and former co-worker, George, Olivia from THE MIDNIGHT SPELL is based off cabaret dancer and friend, Wendy aka Ginger Snaps, and Ashley from THE MIDNIGHT SPELL is based off of Ashley (aka the Zombie Queen) of The Bookish Brunette blog.

Rune came into being because George was reading the online serial of AS THE WORLD DIES and told me point blank I should include him. I started to tell him that I never base characters off of friends until I realized George would survive the zombocalypse. Rune is not George, but I could definitely see them hanging out. I gave several of George's traits to Rune, such as being a biker, the long white hair, and the cocky attitude, but Rune isn't as sweet or kind as George.

Olivia in THE MIDNIGHT SPELL looks nothing like Wendy, but she does share her flare for pinup makeup and cute outfits. She also has a sassy/snarky aspect about her that my co-author, Kody Boye, and I stole from Wendy.  Also, the big epic reveal about Olivia was directly inspired by a certain obsession Wendy has.

Ashley in THE MIDNIGHT SPELL was a no-brainer. The real Ashley is so damn cute, funny, nuts, and amazing, we just cloned her and shoved her into the book.  Kody and I cannot claim to know the inner workings of the real Ashley's mind, but a lot of her personality traits, her likes, and her appearance is in the cloned version of her. One of our Beta reader's recognized her, which I thought was a hoot.

Yet, I don't know if I will want to do this again. All three of these cases are the exceptions to my usual process.

So your characters are nothing like you? Really...

I do share a few traits with some of my characters like I stated before. My love of Betsey Johnson is shared with Samantha.  My snarky humor is infused into some of the characters.  And since I am writing for the characters, its inevitable that they might share some of my favorite phrases.

The one character that I am probably most like is Travis. I didn't really realize it until I was reading the final version of FIGHTING TO SURVIVE just before publication last year. Travis and I share a need to help people though we also tend to be loners. Also his frustration at being pushed into a position he'll actually be good at is something I, too, have experienced.  I also "knew" when I met my husband that he was someone very special and that my life would never be the same in much the same way Travis knows the same about Katie. Those are the similarities we share, but much else is different.

Sometimes a character is so removed from who I am I struggle to connect to them. Jenni from AS THE WORLD DIES, Amaliya from PRETTY WHEN SHE DIES, and Mackenzie in DEAD SPOTS were incredibly difficult to write. I felt like I spent a good portion of the first half of the book discovering who they were. At points, I had to read over what I had already written to get a bead on what was really going on with the character. I'm often surprised to find out that the difficult character is actually fully fleshed out in the story, but I'm just having trouble understanding them.

Characters are sometimes very easy to write. Katie from AS THE WORLD DIES, Maria in THE LAST BASTION OF THE LIVING, and Christy in THE MIDNIGHT SPELL were very easy to plug into and understand their motivations.  Though I had to research Katie's sexuality, she was still much easier to get to know than Jenni.

But you must give your characters something of yourself, right...

Where my characters probably benefit from me is my life experience.  I grew up in a very abusive household and I know what real, true, stark fear is. I've lived with the desperate awful fear and depression that makes you pray that you'll die before you wake up the next morning just so it will all end (I was a kid, btw).  I literally felt like the banner over my childhood read "No one gets out of here alive" to quote Jim Morrison.  I experienced living with the devil and living with an angel.  I saw cruelty and evil in its worst forms in one parent, but also love, compassion, and strength of faith in the other parent.  I stood between heaven and hell.

Because of my childhood and a near fatal car accident, I suffer PTSD.  It used to be crippling, but over the years I have healed and become a much stronger person. I still have my triggers, but they're rarely tripped. I'm very happy in my life now.

So you might think I'm like Jenni because we share PTSD, but we're not.  Jenni's PTSD manifests itself very differently from my own. So much so I had to do heavy research for her.  PTSD makes me overly cautious and I tend to over think situations. Jenni's reaction is to not think about anything and to just act. She careens toward self-destruction while I do everything I can to preserve myself.  In fact, Jenni's reactions to things around her was so far removed from me, I wanted to smack her half the time! I honestly didn't know if she was even going to make it through THE FIRST DAYS when I first wrote the story because she had little, to no impulse control.

I do believe that because of the abuse I suffered, I am able to accurately portray people in life threatening situations. I understand the psychology and the actual emotions of a survivor. Imagining staring into a gun barrel and how you would react is very different from actually experiencing that sort of event. (Not to say that some writers can write about things they've never experienced with accuracy and brilliance). I suspect the emotional depth of my writing adds a layer of reality to the narrative and that is why fans feel so immersed in that world.

So where do your characters come from...

I honestly have no clue. They just show up in my head, talking away, revealing who they are and I have to figure out if I want to tell their story or not. Yes, I  have voices in my head. Entire worlds. Universes. Where it all comes from, I have no clue. But I definitely like being along for the ride.

So in closing, my characters are not me.  If you want to know where I am in my novels....well...this picture sums it up.

Just ignore the person behind the curtain...

What Is The Color of My Character's Eyes Again???

Writing is a bitch. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It is so much more than sitting down and putting pen to paper, or fingers to a keyboard. Think about how many people have told you that they are writing a book, but have never finished?

Yeah.

It's that hard.

It's not just the whole process of transferring a story idea from your imagination to the written word, but also making it a compelling read for your future readership. There are a lot of components to a good story, but today's blog is about characters.

You can have a great story, but if your character doesn't come to life in the minds of the readers, the story will most likely fall flat. As coincidence will have it, Rosemary on Genreality tackled the subject of characters just a few weeks ago when I first started composing this post.

To quote the first comment:

Charlene Teglia
I pretty much only keep books for character. If I don’t connect with the characters, who cares what happens to them?

This is exactly my sentiment. If a character doesn't feel alive or sympathetic to the reader, what is the point? This is especially the case in horror. Where suspense and the horror element are vitally important to keeping the reader on the edge, they must invest their emotions in the characters.

People often ask who my characters are based on. I think it's a natural assumption that a writer must be basing their characters on people they know (or themselves), but this isn't the reality at least in my case. A lot of my characters just pop into my head at unexpected moments.

I will give you an example:

Maria Martinez appeared in my mind unexpectedly one day. I was at work, thinking about how hot it was outside and how glad I was Texas doesn't have rolling blackouts when I saw in my mind a woman sit up in bed, her long hair falling over one shoulder as she listened to the power go out in her section of her city.

From the rough draft of her story:

The fan sputtered than died as the rolling blackout hit her section of the city. With a groan, she peeled the covers from her damp body and sat at the edge of the bed. Her silky black hair fell over one shoulder, settling over one bare breast. The heat was already rising in her small flat. The metal walls and high windows made the narrow room claustrophobic and once the power cut out, stifling.

I quickly wrote down what I "saw" in my mind's eye and that is the opening paragraph of my brand new novel. It wasn't until I was able to sit down and keep writing that I found out what her name was, where her city was, who she was in bed with, and the cause of the rolling blackouts.

This sort of character inspiration moment has happened to me multiple times. I see the character in an compelling setting and I dive in wanting to know more.

In the past, I kept loose notes on characters or story scenarios as they came to me, but I lost a lot of them. During our latest move, I found some scraps of scenes, characters, and stories I had forgotten. Thankfully, I started using yWriter a few years ago and it has helped me tremendously with keeping my notes of inspiration in a safe place.

Using the Character database, this is how I built a character file for Maria Martinez.


The first tab up is basic. It's about her name and description. Sometimes I only have a first name when I start a character, so I just fill in the short name. If I have a full name, I plug that in. If there is a nickname, I place it in Alternative. Since this is the start of creating Maria's biography, I don't know if she has a nickname yet. I can come back later and change it if she does.

I write in a general physical description so I can remember her exact appearance without having to go back through the pages already written, desperately trying to find out what color her eyes are.

Also, she is a major character, so I have clicked that option.

Sometimes a character's biography comes swiftly to mind. Other times it comes out it spurts as I write. I try to update the biography as I work so I have a quick reference the further I get into the story.

Maria's biography came to me around 3,000 words into the novel. I find the more fully immersed I am in the writing, the clearer I "see."






Under notes I usually place personality traits or quirks. Also, I might add any notes on the development arc for the character if I have a clear vision of where the character is headed during the course of the story.











Finally, I add a picture to the database so I have a physical representation of the character. In this case, it is Maria created using the Sims 2 games. When I started playing Sims 2, I had a lot of fun with the actual game. Then, one day, I created one of my characters on a whim. Seeing my character on the screen looking eerily close to how I imagined her was a real inspiration. Since then, I have been making most of my characters in the Sims 2 character generator.

Sims 2 version of Maria Martinez

I have read about other authors clipping photos out of magazines or printing them from the internet so they have a frame of reference for their characters. Having a visual is a neat way of keeping connected to your character. Honestly, there are times in the process when you can lose your way and having visual clues back to your story are very helpful.

So how did Maria pop into my head? In some ways it feels like magic, but looking into my past I see the seeds of her inspiration. Growing up one of my favorite people was a friend of my mother's from the Dominican Republic. She was one of the most beautiful, classy, and stylish women I had ever seen in my life. Also, she was one of the kindest, warmest, most considerate people I have ever encountered. Her life was not easy in any regard, but she had a strength about her that was inspiring. Widowed extremely young, she had difficulty letting go of her husband. I remember his picture on her bureau and how lovingly she had arranged mementos around it. I can see how my mother's friend inspired Maria's great love for Dwayne and her strength of will.

Yet, they are not the same person and far removed from each other in personality.

Every day writers absorb their surroundings, storing away information in the depths of their minds, tiny seeds germinating to become worlds, characters and stories. Those little seeds can be anything from the distinctive voice of someone you meet, the gray eyes of someone you see on a plane, the laugh of a woman after a car accident, etc...etc... I'm not always sure where my characters come from, but I am glad when they arrive to tell their story.

"Your kid is ugly and smells weird" a.k.a. Your Character Sux

Characters are a weird part of the writing experience. They're like your children in some ways. You give birth to them, nurture them, help them have a voice, try to guide them through the pitfalls of life, flinch when they screw up, and cheer when they succeed.

You often end up with a big ol soft spot for them.


But, unlike your kids, you can freakin' kill them!


*innocent smile*


(I'm not THAT bad about killing characters. Well...um...okay...so the editor did send me messages about the extremely high death count that occurs in a very short time in ATWD 2. But those characters HAD to die...de zombies were hungry. :)


But anyway, I have characters I love. Adore. Cherish.

And characters I want to throttle because they are so damn annoying.


I even fear a few of my characters. I imagine them in my real life and get a nasty chill down my spine.

Frankly, if any of my characters could suddenly spring to life and go out to lunch with me, I'm not sure I would WANT that to happen. I like them tucked away in my mind's eye, in their proper world, on mute, when I'm not writing about them. The thought of them demanding face time with me over a cup of coffee doesn't appeal to me.

But I do love them all. Even the ones that piss me off and I can't wait to off. I enjoy creating them. I enjoy developing their personalities. It is one of the joys of writing.

Once the story is done, I either post it online or release it as a paperback. In that moment, I have to take a deep breath and believe I did my best by the characters and their story. This is not always an easy moment. Frankly, its terrifying.

Why?

Because, in a very short time, the readers start telling you exactly what they think of your carefully crafted "children" and its not always pleasant.

Two characters that have people split are Jenni from the As The World Dies Trilogy and Samantha from Pretty When She Dies. Both were hard as hell to write at times and complicated as all get out in their thought processes. Both tended to do things I did not agree with.

"What the hell are you doing?" I would mutter as I wrote down their actions.

This usually incited my husband to start teasing me about the voices in my head.

They were both hard characters to write and I grew to love both of them, but they didn't always make it easy. Jenni has deep psychological issues because of the rising of the zombies and the loss of her family. Samantha just barrels along through life with her own unique perspective. Because Jenni is not all there, sometimes it was hard for me to understand her motivations at first. She starts out in shock and viewing everything around her with a haze of surreality about her thoughts. When she finally snaps out of it, she becomes a vengeful little hellion determined to kill zombies and protect her "new" family. But under the zombie killer, there are still vestiges of the woman she once was and her sanity sometimes slips. Samantha, meanwhile, just does what she thinks is right. The reader may view her actions as "villainous" and her viewpoint annoying at times, but she is always doing what she feels is absolutely the right thing to do. She believes she's the good guy and I had to love her devotion and determination.

Yet, some readers loathe both of these characters while others adore them. It's a weird feeling to hear one person declare their undying love for Jenni (or Sam) then listen to the next fan trash them. I'm not always sure how to respond to these comments. I always like to hear that a characters is beloved, but not sure how to answer when a character is not. Usually, I just say something along the lines of "Oh, everyone has their favorites" and leave it at that.

Don't get me wrong. I know some people will love a certain characters and others won't. I have read quite a few books where I loathed a character other people simply adored (Edward in Twilight comes to mind) and I just couldn't get what the other readers saw in that character.

But as a writer, I'm not sure how to respond. My first impulse is to defend the character and his/her motives, but that would be a dismissal of the reader's opinion. And that's just not right. My second response is to somehow explain the character, but again, this is just a bit condescending on my part, I think. So I guess my default response will have to do for now.

Of course, what is always fun is when I kill a reader's favorite character off...

By the end of the trilogy, I'm gonna get a earful!

Maybe I should start memorizing my appropriate responses now!

The Chicken or the Egg? Or is it, the Character or the Story?

We all have a favorite character of a book, comic, movie or TV show. It can be the hero, who inspires devotion, or the villain, who inspires fear. It can be a quirky supporting cast member that adds a dash of something extra into the mix that makes the story richer.

They are so dynamic, so intense, and so vital to the story, you just cannot imagine them not being there. Imagine Family Guy without Stewie.

You got my point.

One consistent comment made in reviews about As The World Dies: The First Days, is that the characters of the story are well-developed and come across as real people. Some fans have written me to say that the two leads, Jenni and Katie, feel like friends.

I understand how they feel. When I write about the dead world Jenni and Katie live in and the people that surround them, I try to portray them as real, flesh and blood people facing tough choices. I firmly believe that if you want your story to be compelling you have to have characters that people care about. I try hard with even minor characters to create people that seem real and feel like someone you may know.

Otherwise, when I kill them, you're not going to cry. *evil grin*
But kidding aside, when people ask me what comes first, the story or the characters, I have no real definitive answer. Sometimes the character just appears in my head and I have no idea what their story is, just who they are. Jenni was like that. She just appeared in my mind's eye one day when I was at work. I saw her standing on her front porch, staring at these tiny fingers pressed under the front door, holding her bathrobe closed with one hand, and shivering in chilled morning air. It was a sharp, vivid image. And I knew nothing about her story, but I wanted to. So I wrote what I "saw" in my mind's eye as soon as I could take a break. I'm an organic writer, so one sentence lead to the next and I was along for the ride. When Katie arrived, I had no idea who she was either! All I knew was that she was saving Jenni from certain death. Once they were safely inside the truck, I finished my "short story" that I named Tiny Fingers.

Or I thought it was a short story.

It's now a trilogy, so what do I know?

What kept me writing (beyond the initial response from readers on the forum I posted it on) was the characters. I wanted to know what would happen to Jenni and Katie and if they would live or die. So I kept writing.

But sometimes, the story comes first and I have no idea who will populate the new world. When that happens, I start considering who might have a role in the story and usually that spurs on my imagination and characters start appearing. There are certain things that help me "discover" a character.

• What they look like


• Their name


• Their occupation


• Their primary motivation in life

Once I have decided on these traits, the character usually comes into sharp focus and I "get" them.

Example: Peggy from As The World Dies

• She's in her early forties, somewhat plain looking, obviously a smoker from the condition of her skin, and has a very husky voice that drawls out in a thick West Texas accent

• Peggy-It just felt right for her. It was almost Patsy, but Peggy just felt more solid.


• City Secretary of a small Texas town. I have met many of these ladies. They are no nonsense, hard workers who run their towns. Trust me. The power in a small town in Texas is the city secretary, not the mayor.


• To take care of her town and her son. When she doesn't feel in control of what is going on, her stress levels overwhelm her. She's emotional, but tough

Once I had these basics down, the character became solid and well-rounded.

My favorite books are ones with a solid plot, good dialog and characters I can care about. I can't stand to read a book where the characters seem to slip and slide from one persona to another. They never seem to have an consistency and are just used to forward the plot.

Here are a few pointers to make a good character. I've gleaned this information from my favorite and not so favorite writers as I've figured out from their writing what works and what doesn't.

• Do not create a perfect character. A perfect person, who knows everything, never fails, never stumbles, never doubts, and never struggles is boring. If the reader figures out the character is so perfect he/she will never make a mistake, all suspense is gone.
• Don't create a character that has traits that would make she or he unlikable in the real world, but have everyone in your novel love her/him. Your characters should respond realistically. It makes zero sense for your unlikable character to have the undying adoration of the masses if he or she is a total dick.
• If you establish firmly a certain personality trait about your character, don't abruptly toss it away if it doesn't fit where you want the plot to go. Have a good reason for your character to go against their nature. It causes tension, drama and character development.
• Keep up a consistency about your characters appearance. I remember being annoyed when I was growing up with the Nancy Drew books. In one book her hair was the color of bronze, the next she was strawberry blond.
• Don't blur the line between your character and you. Your character is not you and you are not your character. If your character is an avatar for you, then you'll end up doing wacky shit to try and protect her and her choices (no matter how crazy.) Yes, LKH, I'm thinking of you and Anita Blake.
  

Characters are vital to a story. They should never be treated as secondary. Books I've read that have weak characterization are not ones I remember fondly, or even at all.

If you're about to start a new writing project, or working on one now, I highly recommend working on your character biographies before you dive in. Your story will be richer and better for it.

Brain Dead, But Raring To Go

I left my office Friday night for the last time around 1 AM in the morning. I brought my project to a place where I could logically stop and my successor could easily step in. I packed up my personal belongings and come Monday morning, I'll be moving downstairs to my new spot in the company. It's a huge relief to be starting anew.

I had dinner with a friend a few weeks ago and we were talking about the writing process. She was fascinated by the "voices in your head". She was genuinely interested in the process that I go through to wrangle a story onto the page and it was fun talking about my writing experience. It's hard to explain exactly what it is like to have whole worlds bouncing around in your head populated by characters that have a voice in your head and a story to tell.

Most of my stories are born in dreams. I "wake up" in a story, playing a role in what is going on, and gather all the information I can before the alarm goes off. I have had some really vivid and incredible dreams.

Meanwhile, the characters and story lines continue to jostle about in my head trying to get my attention. UGH! And just when I felt I was getting the new ones under control an old one popped up and demanded a rewrite.

*taps fingers*

I need to get these pests in some sort of order.

I suppose it is better to have them lining up and waiting to be written instead of facing a blank page and having no ideas whatsoever.

Recently, an old story came vividly back into my dreams. It was originally written when I was in my teens. It has been sitting in storage in my office closet for years. But the other night, it returned with such vivid intensity, I woke up crying. I dragged the old manuscript out (I can still feel the bumps on the pages from my old typewriter keys) and looked it over. The story is solid. The writing is decent considering how young I was. The dialog is lacking, but I realized it was because I lacked the maturity to actually do justice to the topic. I sat on the floor in my office with my little dog at my side and read over some parts of it. I was a little embarrassed at first with the dialog, but then I realized it was written when I was 14-16. It deserves a rewrite. It's a solid story and the characters are actually well drawn out. I've added it to the pile of "Things Rhiannon Needs to Write".

It's a growing pile.

It's getting scary.

EEK!

I am getting some of the ideas fluttering around in my head into some sort of weird order. I'm writing down what I can on them so the idea will settle down until I can tackle them. Easier said than done at times, but its helping me get focused.

I thought I knew which novel I was going to write next. Now I'm not sure. BAH!

Oh, well. *sigh*

Stupid Muse. She's trying to make my head explode.